Can your marketing content make people feel as good as chocolate or sex? In this video, I interview a guest who believes it can.

Tim Reid is the founder and host of Australia and New Zealand’s number one business and marketing podcast – The Small Business Big Marketing Show. I was a guest on episode 163 of the show and enjoyed our conversation so much that I asked if he’d come on my channel.

Tim has built a global audience of motivated business owners in 110 countries, and is soon to be a published author. He travels the world as a speaker, introducing business owners and marketers to his highly effective Helpful Marketing approach – gaining success and increasing profits, without spending a fortune.

Transcript

Carmen: Can your marketing content make people feel as good as chocolate or even sex? In this video I interview a guest who believes that it can.
Hi, I’m Carmen Sognonvi. Keep watching to learn how to create content that will bring you customers who are pre-sold and ready to buy. By the way if you’d like to get a list of the seven tools I rely on to run all of the marketing in my business, head on over to carmensognonvi.com/tools.

I’ll tell you everything from who to use for graphic design and printing and I’ll even tell you about an app that helps you track how your flyers are being distributed.
In this video I interview Tim Reid. Tim is the founder and host of Australia and New Zealand’s number one business and marketing podcast: The Small Business Marketing Show. I’m sorry, the Small Business Big Marketing Show.

Tim has built a global audience of motivated business owners in 110 countries and he’s soon to be a published author. He travels the world as a speaker introducing business owners and marketers to his highly effective, helpful marketing approach: gaining success and increasing profits without spending a fortune.
Tim believes there’s never been a better time to market your business, ever. Here’s my interview with Tim. Hi Tim, thanks for joining me today.

Tim: Hello Carmen.

Carmen: So, we are here today to talk about helpful marketing. So can you just give us an idea of what does that mean to you? What is helpful marketing?

Tim: Helpful marketing is based on a beautifully simple premise that every small business I know loves. Helpful marketing is based on the fact that you’re standing on a mountain of knowledge. You know so much about the industry which you operate, so much about the products and services that you sell, and so much about the problems that your customers and prospects have.
So helpful marketing demands that you share that knowledge openly, knowing that it will pull people towards you.

Carmen: Great, and so what are some examples of companies that you feel like are doing this right? And particularly you know, small businesses, maybe mom and pop stores that you’ve seen that really understand this concept.

Tim: Great, so what we’ll do in order to answer that maybe if I could give a step process to kind of get to then examples of businesses doing it right. So a really good first step in helpful marketing is I just reflect on what it’s like to be helpful ok and the last time you helped. So take off your business owner’s hat, take off your marketer’s hat and just think about that time when you helped and that time when you’re helpful and it feels good.

And I’ll tell you a little secret Carmen. It’s not so much a secret–being helpful releases dopamine into the bloodstream, which side of eating chocolate and having sex. So helpful marketing is a marketing strategy that tastes good and feels good at the same time. So you’ll love that.

So first get into that helpful mindset then go out and identify all the questions that you’ve ever been asked from customers and prospects. Every single question from how do we work with you to why do you cost so much? Or why do you cost so little to all the sort of how to questions around your products and services.

And then start to answer them via video, blog posts, podcasts, however whatever the media kind of resonates with you, that you feel most comfortable doing. And then simply start to answer them and each question and answer almost becomes like a blog post. You know it’s like it becomes an additional page on your website.

You should get to the point when you’ve got fifty, sixty, maybe a hundred questions and answers and you can create what I call a knowledge center on your website. So on that knowledge which is like the primary…a primary navigation button on your website, you can have all those questions and answers. And this is just an incredibly rich source of information for your customers.

So not only that but it’s like well why would you have that? Two reasons. It gives Google lots of opportunities to index your business and your rank what you want to rank well on Google.

And it’s quite powerful when a client or customer or prospect rings you or contacts you and says, asks you a question, for you to then be able to email them a link to a video or a podcast or a blog post. What’s simply a page on your website that answers that question in some detail, they’re gonna think you’re a bit of an expert. So that is like that’s the first step in to helpful marketing, answer all the questions that your clients have.

Businesses that are doing this…well I’ll give you a couple of great examples. There is a guy local to me, I’m in Melbourne Australia. And he’s got, he has a boat business where he buys and sells power boats, right.

So it’s a very transactional business and his name’s Darren. And his businesses is called St Kilda Boat Sales. And Darren went from being transactional to transformational by being helpful.
And here’s what he did. He goes down his businesses on the bay, on the on the water. And he goes down every Thursday with his tripod, his iPhone, and a $60 Lapel mic and does a weather report.

He simply says this is what’s happening out on the bay this weekend and how it’s going to affect your boating. He uploads it to YouTube, he grabs that video off YouTube and puts it on his website, he emails that link from his website to his database of email addresses. And we all should build a database as you I’m sure have shared with your audience.

And as a direct result of doing that, two things have happened. Number one is businesses increased 53 percent year on year, simply by being helpful in a pretty tough market selling a high involvement purchase, like a boat. The other thing that’s happened is and he’s done two bits of helpful marketing down.

The videos, the weather reports, and he’s written a book. And you’re gonna love the name of this book. It’s called Honey, Let’s Buy a Boat.

It’s twelve chapters, giving blokes 12 reasons to share with their wife as to why they should buy a boat. That is a really hopeful book as well. He’s been approached by the local, a local TV station and a local radio station to be the weather reporter for the upcoming summer, just gone ok.

And he took the radio job and for the four months over the summer, Darren was the weather guy on Melbourne’s biggest radio station. So that’s just a classic example of not only of taking helpful marketing to the second step which is you know, creating those videos, writing books, whatever it might be. Because what’s really interesting is that when you’re helpful, amazing things happen.

Not only will you get more inquiry but other wonderful things happened, like Darren’s now the weather guy on a radio station. You know for me, I started off creating a podcast six years ago and now I’m an in demand speaker around Australia and the world.

I did 8 countries last year and again just the result of being helpful on my podcast. I’m rambling now, over to you.

Carmen: No, that’s fantastic. Yeah, I think based on what you said you know helpful marketing, there’s a couple of well there’s a lot of side effects.
But one is, as you said it really establishes you as an expert and then that can lead to more opportunities.

Like you mentioned media opportunities you get written up, you get quoted as an expert, and that kind of ends up snowballing. I think the other effect that business owners will notice is that their customers come ready to buy, you know.
So it’s like they’ve already done all the research because you have so much information on your website.

If they’ve taken the time to look through it, instead of that conversation when they call you, instead of you having to sell them on why they should do business with you, it’s almost like yeah I’m ready to start.
Here’s my credit card. Have you found that in the businesses that you’ve worked with?

Tim: Yea, totally spot on. So for my business I get emailed every day or a phone call every other day, saying hey Timbo.
You don’t mind if I call you Timbo do you? Hey Timbo I feel as though I know you.

So that’s pretty powerful marketing and all I’ve done is consistently created a podcast. That’s my helpful marketing.
And the other thing you’re right, they look at your hopeful marketing. Whether it be in be in the form of video, podcasting, a brochure, however you’re sharing your knowledge.

And they call you and when they call you, they’re pre-sold.
So they’re calling you either to make an appointment, to find out where you are, to ask a remaining question that maybe hasn’t been answered.

But the most important thing is they’re less price-sensitive because they’ve developed…they’re familiar with you, they trust you. And they’re kind of, they’re really hoping that you’re the one for them.

Carmen: And so speaking of being price-sensitive or less price-sensitive, what do you recommend in terms of divulging information about pricing on your website? Because this is obviously one of the top questions that customers have. How much is this gonna cost me?
Do you feel like it’s better to be a completely open book?

Do you think you should reveal a little bit? Keep a little bit hidden? What kind of strategies would you recommend for people?

There’s some pricing strategies that I’ve heard along the way that I’ve thought, that’s smart. So first of all your question is prices on the website or off the website.
I don’t know.

There’s not I don’t think there’s a straight answer to that. I think it depends on what you sell, what your competitors are doing, how comfortable you feel about it as the business owner, does it give you an advantage?

You know there’s so many kind of to’s and fro’s…pros and cons to doing it.
From a pricing point of view, there’s a couple of things that just come to mind that are in the discussion around pricing. One is I love seeing pricing plans on websites.

I kind of really, those comparisons.
You know you go to websites like a survey monkey or mailchimp. Two monkey things going on there but I know both of them have got really nice comparison charts, which show what you get for the free offer and then the you know, bronze, silver, gold offer.

And as the offers go up so does what you get.
And it’s just a really nice way of getting ahead around where the value is. And generally in those pricing charts they identify you know, the most popular.

So it kind of drives you to that one.
That’s the one they want you to buy at the very minimum. I like those.

I also I came across and it’s relevant to pricing.
I interviewed a fellow a few weeks ago who had his pricing, in fact no it was a lady. It was…she’s the biggest seller on Etsy. Alicia from Three Bird Nest.

And when I asked her it was because it was like it was just any regular number and it felt a little bit wholesale and it allowed her to get a little bit closer to the next dot rounding it up to the next dollar. So it was just a kind of smart pricing strategy because so often we see you know decimals of 99 or 97 and it’s like yeah that’s kinda common. So pricing’s tough, that’s the outcome of that discussion.

Carmen: Yeah and I think that one way that you can incorporate pricing into the hopeful marketing content that you’re producing is educating people like you said on why are things expensive or why are things cheap. So rather than just divulging all the pricing, you can educate the consumer on what are the different options in the marketplace and then where does your business fall in. And then what are maybe the pros and cons.

It’s kind of like you can go very high end or you can go very low end. Maybe we’re somewhere in the middle or we’re one of those extremes and then why would you do one versus the other. So that way you’re educating without giving away everything right away.

Tim: And that is the discussion. So like there’ll be listeners who were thinking but pricing for me, I can’t give somebody…particularly if you’re in a service industry. It’s like I can’t give you a particular price.

Cool, then that’s your answer but support it with reasons why. Like you know the answer to that question could be…it’s one of the most commonly asked questions. It’s how much do I cost and it’s like well I would love to be able to say X dollars but I can’t because it’s between X&Y dollars.

And here’s why. Right. And here are the factors that you have to think about.

Carmen: Yup yeah, absolutely. So if let’s talk about a specific example. Let’s say there is a bakery, local bakery.

And they feel like they want to kind of dip their toe in the water when it comes to helpful marketing.
What would you say is the first thing they should do? Should it be to compile that list of questions or what do you think? How can they get the ball rolling?

Tim: It’s an interesting question because helpful marketing, the more high involvement the purchase decision, the more effective helpful marketing becomes. Because people are searching online.
Like when you’ve got a high involvement purchase, an expensive purchase, a complicated purchase, you’ve gotta google it.

You’re gonna do your research. Helpful marketing by its very nature helps you rank well on Google.
A bakery isn’t a high involvement decision.

So you go uhhh do I really need to be there? Not so much but they can still…I still think, if you’ve got a website, you should have a blog.
Right?

So on the assumption that the bakery has a website with a menu, with its location, maybe with some testimonials, product shots, all that type of stuff. If they want that website to continually rank well for when someone does a search, a local search for office catering Brooklyn. If I was the bakery in Brooklyn, I’d want to rank…I’d want to be the one who ranks on page one.

And having a blog is going to do that. What’s a bakery’s blog talk about? Good question.
It could talk about the different types of bread rolls, that’d be boring.

But what they do so to get a blog going for any business is like a simple three-step process, which is called an editorial mission. And to get clear on your editorial mission, you simply ask three questions.
What have you got to offer? To who?

And what outcome can they expect?
And if you answer those three questions, it will provide some kind of filtering mechanism for you to decide what to blog about and what not to blog about. So if a bakery editorial mission was, thinking on the run here Carmen, tips and tricks for people in offices around Brooklyn to have a fun lunch.

You know, to have an interesting lunch. Then you can start to blog about things that the bakery does, the little packages they have and little ideas that not only you can get from the bakery but what else can you do around Brooklyn, you know.
You don’t go and eat at the bakery every day. So what other things could you do around lunch time in Brooklyn?

Carmen: Sure, yeah.

Tim: Yeah, so that was a kind of on the run the example but the point is the blog should be sort of engaging and entertaining. It doesn’t have to be completely rational and talk just about what it is that you do.
Carmen: Sure, so speaking of blogging how does helpful marketing relate to content marketing? Because that’s another buzzword that people hear a lot. So is it the same thing? Is it an approach to content marketing? How would people understand those two?
Tim: Great question. Its content marketing is the buzzword and the Internet is, that’s been the enabler. The internet has allowed us to create an infinite amount of content. Microphones, video camera, computer, away we go, you know. Therefore everyone’s creating content.
Put a filter of helpful on it and all of a sudden you’re starting to…if that’s content, then it’s now starting to narrow down to helpful content, helpful marketing. So helpful marketing is purely content that helps your customers make a more informed purchase decision in your favor, as opposed to just smashing out content.

Carmen: Great. And then what ratio would you…do you recommend to people when it comes to…let’s say they’re emailing their list? Obviously if you’re creating this helpful content, then you should be sharing it with your email list. Otherwise, they’re not gonna know it’s there.

Do you have any recommendations for what ratio of content versus promotion that people should do? Because obviously you need both.

Tim: Yeah, you do. So if we were to follow the Gary Vaynerchuk school of thought, Gary being social media expert and he has that book Jab Jab Jab Right Hook. So a jab is a gift, is a gift you know like here’s something helpful.

A right hook is buy from me that’s a three…every three gifts, you get an ask.
I think that could be a bit much but I just think helpful…here’s the thing, helpful marketing, we’re not creating art. Every bit of helpful marketing has a call to action attached to it.

So if I’m creating a video, if I’m the bakery in Brooklyn and I’m creating the video that says here’s the best three spots to get coffee in Brooklyn outside of us, then you do that video and at the end you have a super that says you know by the way we’ve got a lunchtime special on between 12 and 2 every day…every weekday.
Come and see us. There’s your call to action so I think as a ratio you can just…it can be a hundred percent helpful but every time they can be asking it.

And even if there isn’t like a really avert to ask which is like buy for me.
The fact that you’re being helpful is a good thing anyway and it’s going to register with people that I like these guys, you know. I’m gonna keep them on my shopping list.

Carmen: Great, great definitely. So what are some final thoughts that you would like to leave with our viewers, when it comes to helpful marketing. What’s one thing they should really keep in mind?

Tim: I thought you said just final thoughts generally. I was thinking donuts and toothpicks and all those things. Be helpful, like just sit with the idea of being helpful before you jump into the idea.

Be a human being, be a consumer before you’re the business owner or the marketer and think what would you like?
You know, if you were walking into your business, what would you like to see? What information would you like to help make an informed decision?

So do that.
I don’t think enough, we get so caught up in our business as the owners that we forget to be our customers. And that’s really powerful.

So do that and think about and start to feel this concept of being helpful.
After you’ve done that, then just choose a medium. It could be video if you’re comfortable staring down the barrel of a camera, it could be audio, maybe you’re a great writer.

But just start to respond to all these questions that you’re being asked.
And do one a week. Why after a year, that’s 52 questions that you’ve answered.

And put them on your website.
That’s fifty two additional pages that Google can now index and help rank you, ok. And just on that don’t think that because you’re a small business listening to this that you can’t rank well on Google because they update it, well they always update their algorithm.

But a few months ago with the pigeon update, which is what they called the update to their algorithm, they favor local businesses.
So if you are looking for a bakery in Brooklyn and someone does a search for a bakery in Brooklyn, Google really wants to deliver search result from a bakery in Brooklyn.

And that sounds really obvious but if there’s… if a bakery in Brooklyn hasn’t gone and done the work to rank well, then…and Google can’t find one , then they’ll rank one in an adjoining suburb. You know, so yeah do the hard work and enjoy it.
You know, like one of the things I love about helpful marketing is that it is fun it simply relies on the knowledge that you already have.

And my wish for anyone who embarks on any marketing of their businesses, that it becomes a hobby. That they actually really enjoy the next time it comes to marketing their business because if you enjoy it, you’ll do it more often, if it’s a hobby time becomes irrelevant and you’ll just get in to a bit of a rhythm. That’s what I do.

Carmen: Okay, absolutely. Well thank you so much Tim for, Timbo I should say, for spending time with us today.

Tim: No worries Cambo.

Carmen: That’ll be my new Twitter handle, Cambo Sognonvi. So if people want to learn more about what you do, and then also listen to your fabulous podcast, where should they go?

Tim: They can head over to small business big marketing dot com. That’s where my podcast lives. It’s called the Small Business Big Marketing Show.
And I have a forum attached to that website and for right now I think it’s 49 bucks a month.

I mean they’re every day answering people’s questions around marketing and there’s a whole lot of other motivated business owners from many different countries doing the same thing. It’s just a good community to support each other on this journey we call marketing.
So that’s where I’d head over and if you want me to come and speak in an event at a bakery in Brooklyn, I’m here. Just book me.

Carmen: Absolutely, all right thank you so much and everybody definitely check out the show because I think it’s one of the few podcast I know of that really focuses not exclusively but features a lot of local businesses, which I think is very under represented especially online.
So it’s a great show. I’ve been a past guest.

I should’ve looked up which episode number that was before we got on the call.
But I’ll put it in the show notes. And it’s definitely a great show, so definitely check it out. Alright thanks again Tim.

Tim: Thanks Carmen.

Carmen: Wasn’t that a fabulous interview? I learned so much, so here are my top five takeaways from what Tim had to say.

Number one: each week answer one question from a customer. A really easy way to get started with content marketing is to just write out a list of all the questions that customers have ever asked you. Then once a week pick one of those questions and answer it.

Each one of those answers should be either a separate blog post or separate page on your website. By the end of the year, if you’ve been doing this once a week you’ll have fifty two pages of new content on your site, which is gonna be awesome for your SEO and Google search rankings.

Number two: pick the medium that you are most comfortable with. Just because everyone and their grandma and me are doing video, don’t feel pressured to do the same. If you feel really awkward and terrible on camera but you’re an amazing writer, create text content.

That is totally fine. So pick the medium that feels most comfortable for you because that makes it much more likely that you’re actually going to stick with creating content on a consistent basis.

Number three: informed customers are readier to buy and less price-sensitive. By creating all of this helpful marketing content, you are actually educating and informing your customer. And the more educated a customer is, the more willing they will be to buy from you.

You’ll often find that customers will come to you ready to buy. They’ve already done all their research, you’ve already answered all their questions through your website and so they’re actually ready to just get started. What you’ll also find Tim pointed out is that these customers who are educated tend to be less price-sensitive.

You’ve already won them over. You don’t have to try to close the sale because they’re ready to buy and they don’t mind paying for your prices. They’re not going to haggle with you to try to get a better deal because they see the value that you bring. So who doesn’t want customers who are happy to pay your price and ready to buy right?

Number four: the higher your price, the more you need to educate your customer. In order to make a purchasing decision, your customer needs a certain amount of information. That that amount of information varies depending on the price of the product that you’re selling.

If you sell cupcakes, your customer probably doesn’t need all that much information but if you sell boats they probably need a great deal more information. So make sure that you adjust accordingly and understand the nature of the sale.

Number five: add a call to action to every piece of marketing content. This is probably my favorite one because when I was on Tim’s show he actually called me the call to action queen or something like that.
So don’t forget that when you’re creating all this marketing content, the end goal is basically to get them to buy eventually.

So don’t be afraid to include a call to action in every piece of content that you create, whether it’s a video, blog post, an audio podcast. You want to make sure that you add a relevant call to action whether that’s for them to visit that particular page on your website or to call you or to ask about a special that you’re doing. Because that makes it that much more likely that people are going to take action.

Ok, so if you found this video useful I would encourage you to sign up to get email updates from me. Just head on over to Carmen Sognonvi dot com slash newsletter and sign up there. And if you have a question you would like me to answer in a future video, just email it to me at info at Carmen Sognonvi dot com.

Do you design your own marketing materials, but wish they looked more professional?

In this video, you’re going to learn some great tips and tricks to make your home-made marketing materials look high end.

I interview Pamela Wilson. She is an award-winning graphic designer and marketing consultant who has helped small businesses and large organizations create “big brands” since 1987.

In 2010, she founded Big Brand System to show small business owners how a system of strategic marketing and great design makes them look professional, cohesive and successful. She believes that your business may be small, but your brand can be BIG.

Pamela is now Executive Vice President of Educational Content at Copyblogger Media, where she helps people build a strong presence on the web.

Transcript

Do you design your own marketing material, but wish they could look more professional?

Hi. I am Carmen Sognonvi. In this video, you are going to learn some tips and tricks for helping to make your marketing material that are homemade look high-end.

By the way, if you want to get the 7 tools I rely on for marketing in my business, head on over to CarmenSognonvi.com/tools. I’ll cover everything from graphic to design and printing, and I’ll even show you an app that we use where you can track how your fliers are actually distributed.

In this video, I interview Pamela Wilson. Let me tell you a little more about Pamela.

She is an award-winning graphic designer and marketing consultant who has helped small businesses and large organizations build big brands since 1987.

In 2010, she founded Big Brand System to show small business owners how a system of strategic marketing and great design makes them look professional, cohesive and successful.

She believes that you business may be small, but your brand can be big.

Pamela is now Executive Vice-President of educational content at Copy Blogger Media, where she helps people build a strong presence on the web.

Without further ado, here’s is my interview with Pamela.

C: Hi Pamela! Thanks for joining me today.

P: Hi Carmen! I’m so glad to be here.

C: Great, so what we wanted to bring you on today to talk about is design tips. So, A lot of small business owners obviously don’t have large budgets so they are doing their own graphic design, so maybe making their own fliers, posters, maybe even building simple websites, designing emails.

C: And so, what I would really love to get from you, since you are really an expert in this area, is what are some — well let’s start with — What are the top mistakes you would say that you see business owners making when it comes to graphic design? That is making their design look not as professional or as compelling as it could be.

P: Right, it’s such a great question and there is an answer to it that may not be what people are expecting, but I would say that the biggest mistake I see is a lack of consistency.
What happens is that people get enamored with colors or fonts and they say, “Oh, I need to do a flier so I’m going to use that font. It’s so cool. It’s such a cool font. I’m going to use it on my next flier. Then, they see a color, maybe a color a competitor has used and they say, “Oh, you know that red, it looks really good. I’m going to use red on my next flier.”

P: And what happens is all of their materials looks different and there is no consistency between them. So the market that is trying to understand who their business is and trying to get a handle on their brand doesn’t have anything to hold onto to. There is nothing consistent that they see across time.

P: So that, to kinda morph into the next question, I know you wanted to know about simple ways to brand and things that are inexpensive. It’s basically that, picking a couple of fonts, a couple of colors that you decide to associate with your brand and using those very consistently over time and it takes a lot of discipline. It’s not easy.

C: Yeah, that’s a great tip. because one of my first jobs when I graduated from college was when I worked at a marketing consultancy and I had the opportunity to work closely with a couple graphic designers, and I learned a lot. For example, big companies will have what they call — um…I’m forgetting…

P: Style guides. [laughter]

C: Yes, style guides. Right. It will be, you know, exactly, we only use these two colors primarily and these will be the secondary colors. We only use this font. Headers look like this, subheads look like this. So basically things are spelled outs so that’s when you look at material from big companies it has that consistency that you are talking about, right?

P: It’s consistent, and you know what it’s so important with big companies because what happens in a big companies is that you all these different people that make material to represent the brand so and there is no consistency between the people themselves. So they do need some kind of guideline. And what happens is people who have small businesses just think oh well, I”m going to do them so they always look the same because they come from me. But over time, sometimes we have this shiny object syndrome where, like I said, we are like, “Oh, that font. I want to use it.” or “Oh, that color looks great. I want to use that color.”

P: And we end up going after these things that take us off brand. It takes you off brand. It’s like outside of this brand language you’ve developed, it just doesn’t look consistent. So, the reason that’s bad, it’s not because we have to be strict; it’s also because our market is being bombarded with messages a marketing messages all day long from the time they get up to the time they go to sleep.

P: So, if you want any chance in making a dent, an impression with your brand, you need to be very consistent with the way you deliver that message every single time it’s delivered. Because if you do that over time, if you are consistent, then you have a chance that something to happen like for instance, Coca-Cola. When you see that Coca-Cola red with those white letters, you know, even if you couldn’t make out the letters, you would know it was Coca-Cola. And if you see a truck and it’s brown with gold on it, you know that’s UPS, you just know it, you know?

C: Yeah.

P: And that comes from using those branding elements consistently overtime.

C: Great, and so, um, what are some tips that you could share with our audience to make their graphic design look more professional? So, even if they are doing it themselves, complete DIY, what are some simple things they can keep in mind to make just make it look that much more professional?

P: Yeah, well those two things we just talked about are super important so I want to reiterate them. Pick a couple of fonts that you think represent your brand that are easy to read. Use those very consistently. That’s actually going to make your job a lot easier, because you will go to make your brochure or your flier, and there are hundreds of fonts and if you are like me there are thousands of fonts on your computer, and it’s much easier if you say, “No. I’m going to use this one or I’m going to use that one.”

P: And then your big decision is how large I’m going to use it or how bold I’ll use it. The same thing with colors. Doing that alone is going to make it a lot more professional. On top of that, one of the biggest mistakes that people make who don’t have design training try to cram a lot of information into any space.

P: Think about a letter size piece of paper. Somebody who doesn’t have design training tends to put the headline close to the top of the paper, maybe it’s half an inch away from the border of the paper – Um- and then they run the text, also, maybe 1/2 inch from the border of the paper, which is kinda the default margin that most of the program give you. Right?

A designer, immediately, as soon as they open a document, the first thing they do is bring in those margins, because bringing in those margins is going to immediately inject white space into the document and make it look easier to read. So that alone, I mean, that move alone, having 1.5 inch wide margins is going to make it look like a designer had their hands on it. That’s like a super secret professional trick that we use. [laughter]

C: Would that also apply with the space between the lines of text?

P: Somewhat. There is a delicate balance when it comes to that. One of the things you want to do is you want related text to stick together. That’s the highly technical term for what we call it. [laughter] You don’t want to space your lines out so much that you are having to visually hop from line to line to be able to follow them. So, if you have a paragraph of text, you want to have it relatively compact so people see it as one element, if that makes sense.

P: They see your headline as an element. They see your body text as a separate element. And it’s kinda hanging together visually. So you don’t want to spread it out too much. It’s a little different on the web. So, if you are doing it for a website, typically line spacing on a website is a little looser. It’s just a little more open than what you would use in print for like a flier or brochure.

C: Speaking of this phenomenon of trying to pack too much information into one piece, it seems to me a lot of that also comes down to not being super clear on the goal of what that particular piece is supposed to do. For example, I know a lot of people in my audience send me their fliers to critic, and very often they are trying to cram all their products and services they offer, their story all into one piece, and often I’ll tell them, you know, it’s – the only purpose of the flier is to do one thing, so maybe you want them to visit this page on your website or call your phone number. Once they have made contact, then rely that information. Um – so what are some – are there any tips you can share when it comes to when it comes to what is the purpose of each piece?

P: That is a fantastic tip. You can’t ask your one flier to take on the entire burden of marketing your whole business. It’s like too much for that little flier. It usually works better if you think about your marketing as a journey that you are taking your customer along. And usually no single piece of your marketing is going to take them across the whole journey. It’s like this piece is a step, and this piece will move them onto the next place and this piece moves them to the next place.

P: If you think about it that way, you truly can drill down and think, when they are in this part of the journey, what is the one thing to do that will move them to the next part of the journey, and you just, it’s more like stepping stones. You just try to move them along those stepping stones with your different marketing pieces rather than asking one single marketing piece to do the whole job.

P: For example, the way that would play out on a website is you may have a homepage that people land on, so they land on your homepage, and you have various stepping stones on your homepage where they can then move to a further point on their customer journey. So if they are interested in a specific part of your business, you try to move them to a page on the site that talks about that part of your business. So no single page is doing your entire marketing job. You are just kinda moving them to the next point. Does that make sense?

C: Yes, I love that analogy of stepping stones. Of course, you’re a designer so you made it very visual. I think that can help people visual that you go from this stone to the next stone to the next stone. And all along the way, you want to have a really singular focus.

C: Let’s talk about photos. If you are a small business owner, very often you are relying on stock photography. I definitely encourage people, as early as you can to try and get your own photos taken. These days there’s many inexpensive way to do this with so many aspiring photographers out there. But let’s say you don’t have that in place yet, and you are really relying on stock photography. What are some tips you have for picking good photos? As we all know, there’s a lot of terrible, terrible stock photography out there.

P: Yeah. There is a lot of terrible stock photography. There are a couple of things that I tell people to avoid. One thing is, photography usually works better if the people in the photo look like the type of customer you are trying to attract. So you might have a business where all your customers look like professional models, but most of us don’t, so it’s possible that all of your customers are perfectly groomed and wearing little polo shirts – I don’t know – and they just had their hair and makeup done. But most of us don’t have customers that look like that. The first thing to look for is anything that looks like they hired a set of professional models to photograph the.

P: You want real people, right? So, if you are trying to get stock photography that looks like your customer, they should be real people. They should have some __ , have some wrinkles. They should look like real, relatable people. Sometimes you see a photo and you are like, oh that’s perfect, but you want to avoid photos were people are overly posed. They just look like they are posing for a photographer.

Transcript

Tech-Start-Ups are the life-blood of entrepreneurship, right? Wrong.
Hi, I’m Carmen Sognonvi.
Keep watching because in this video I’m going to explain why I think Tech-Start-Ups are actually destroying entrepreneurship, and I’ll show you how you need to think differently if you want to be successful in business.

By the way, if you’d like to get a list of the seven tools I rely on to run all of the marketing in my business, head on over to CarmenSognonvi.com/tools. There I’ll share with you everything from who we use for graphic design and printing, and I’ll tell you about a cool app that you can use to track how your flyers are being distributed.

Imagine you’re in a coffee-shop and you over-hear this conversation:

“Hey, Carmen! How’s it going?”

“Hey! I’m doing great! Guess what? I just got a twenty thousand dollar line of credit on my credit card. Isn’t that awesome?”

“Oh,my God! You’re so wealthy!”

“I know!”

Okay, so that would seem ridiculous, right? After all, the twenty thousand dollars doesn’t belong to me.

It’s just that someone at this credit card company has said, “hey, hold onto this twenty thousand. I’m giving it to you in the knowledge that you’re going to pay me back with more money on top of that.

That’s not making me wealthy. The sad thing is the equivalent of this conversation is happening every single day in the business media.

How often have you read about a founder of a cool tech-start-up that’s being lauded for being successful, and the only proof of that success is that they’ve managed to raise X amount of million dollars in venture capital?
Here’s the thing: If you manage to raise money for your company, that’s great! There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s just the beginning.

We’re at this really strange phase in history where people seem to equate raising money with actual success in business, without realizing that’s just the first step. Now, you actually have to take that and go make money.

Before I continue, I just want to make it clear that I am not against venture capital. I know that there are many businesses out there that can’t be boot-strapped.

You need to have venture capital to get things off the ground, and that’s totally fine. There’s nothing wrong with that.

What I do have a problem with though, is that people are acting as if venture capital is the end game. Perfect example of this is: I was reading recently about LearnVest.

LearnVest is a start-up that has been lauded all over the place. They’ve been written up everywhere from Entrepreneur, to Inc., Business Week. Every publication you can imagine.

The founder has been on pretty much every magazine cover. She keynotes conferences all over the place.

This is a company that’s had a lot of buzz. I was just reading that they’ve been acquired by Northwestern Mutual. One thing that was really, really interesting in the article is if you read between the lines of the press release that was issued about this, you’ll realize that LearnVest raised over 75 million dollars in venture capital.

That was basically the basis of a lot of this hype and a lot of this media attention. But, if you read the press release that was issued surrounding the acquisition, you’ll realize that the company generated less than 2.2 million dollars in revenue.

Just to put that into perspective: that’s probably the same amount that a popular bakery in your neighborhood makes. I’m guessing they didn’t have to raise 75 million dollars to do it.

The reason that I think tech-start-ups are really destroying entrepreneurship is because we’re raising this generation of entrepreneurs that thinks the point of business is to raise money.

They are really good at raising money, talking people into investing in them, but they have absolutely no idea how to make money. That’s a real problem.

Let’s say that you started a business and your end goal is to sell this business. You actually don’t care about making money. Because you’re just making something that you know is going to be really valuable that you know it’s going to get acquired.

You know what? That’s totally fine. Say, a business acquires you and you never generated any revenue, but they acquired you anyway. You walk away with a big sum of money.

Congratulations. That’s awesome. But, guess what? You didn’t build a business. You built a product.

Because, business’s actually generate revenue and hopefully generate profit. So, what you did was you built a product that was very valuable. That was something that this other business knew that they wanted for themselves because they would have a way to make money using it.

But, you built a product, not a business. That means you’re not and entrepreneur, you’re an inventor.

It’s no different than inventing some kind of gadget that gets sold on infomercials. You know, there’s nothing wrong with it, but understand that there’s a difference.

What should you take away from this? Well, if you’re flipping through business magazines and you find yourself comparing yourself to the founders that you see on these magazine covers, please stop.

It’s not the right success metric for you. Understand that the founders of these tech-start-ups live in a very specific world with a very specific set of rules.

In their world, the only way they get cash in the door, is not by selling their product or service to a consumer, it’s by raising more investment capital.

They need to do this round, after round, after round. Every round has to value them at a higher valuation. Otherwise, they’re going to see their reputation change in the marketplace. That’s not going to work well for them.

Part of that game is they have to keep building this buzz machine around themselves. Part of that is being really prominent in the media, on the conference scene, and getting their name out there on a constant basis, because this is part of how they generate cash.

You’re probably in a of business where you generate cash the “old fashioned way.” By actually selling stuff, right?

Understand there are tons of companies out there that are absolutely killing it. That are doing seven figures, eight figures, nine figures that we’ll never read about in the business media because they are not seeking media attention. They don’t need it.

They’re doing just fine by actually selling their products or services to customers who are happily paying top dollar for that.

If you find yourself comparing your business those that you read in magazines, stop. You need to decide on the correct metrics to measure your own success.

If you are not a tech-start-up, you don’t need to be measuring your success in terms of how many millions of dollars of venture capital you raised.

Now, if you’re in the very early stages of your business, then maybe it is suitable for you to measure some success by how much capital you’ve raised. That is going to take you to the next level. Understand that this is not the end goal. This is the end goal.

How are you going to take that capital, then build revenue, and then build a profitable business. That’s the end goal.

Please, do yourself a favor and understand that you need to define success by the correct metrics. Those correct metrics usually have to do with revenue and profits.

If you found this video useful I would encourage you to get email updates from me. Just head on over to CarmenSognonvi.com/newsletter and sign up there.

If you have a question for me that you’d like me to answer in a future video, just email it to me at info@CarmenSognonvi.com

It’s time for some shou-outs! We’re doing another Instagram edition. If you’re not already following me on Instagram, I am @CarmenSognonvi

Be sure to find me there. Today I would like to shout-out:
@DigitalChick
@JenHoustonSolari
@JoshuaMichaelPaterson
@WilliamKingII

Thank you to all of you for your lovely comments. I’ve linked to all of their profiles below, so be sure to check them out.

Transcript

Did you collect a ton of leads at an event and you’re not sure how to follow up with them? Hi I’m Carmen Sognonvi, keep watching because in this video I will show you the three things you need to do to make sure that you are following up on leads in the right way.

By the way, if you would like to get a list of the seven tools I rely on to do all the marketing of my business, head on over to carmensognonvi.com/tools. I will tell you everything from who we use for graphic design and printing and I will also tell you about a mobile app you can use to track your flyer distribution.

So you collected tons of leads at an event. So you are feeling pretty good about yourself, but you are not sure what to do next. I have three ideas for you, but before we can even get to those ideas, we need to make sure that you set things up the correct way in the first place.

If you haven’t already watched my video on street fairs, be sure to check it out. Because in there I explain why it’s important that you’re not giving out promotional junk at your booth and what you should be doing instead is giving out a free sample or a free trial for that person’s contact information.

Ideally you want to be delivering that sample at a later date so that you will have a reason to get back in touch with them. So when you are actually doing the fair, you want to make sure that you have already offered them an irresistible trial or sample.

Alright, let’s assume that you did that correctly, what do you do next?

Number one is to send a short note that night or the next day. So if you really want to stand apart from all of the other businesses that they met at that event, you want to follow up with them right away.

Now this first follow up doesn’t need to be a full on sales pitch. But what it is it’s just a brief note saying hey, it was such a pleasure to meet you today or yesterday at blah blah blah event. I just want to let you know that I am going to be in touch with you in a few days to deliver you the sample or the giveaway.

And in the mean time here is a link to our website where you can learn more about XYZ product or service that you offer. So what we actually do in my business is I have this all set up in our CRM system. So we use Infusionsoft and it’s really easy in Infusionsoft to create a web form, an internal webform, that just has name, first name, last name, email address and phone number.

When we come back from the fair I have my staff enter all of that data using that internal webform and then I have programmed that webform to automatically send out a text message and an email message to that lead as soon as they hit enter.

And so that way, on our end, it’s not us typing out all of these emails, it’s literally just filling out some information into a form and then hitting submit and immediately that person gets a text and an email.

So if you can implement a similar system, that will allow you to do this much more efficiently.

Number two, add them to your email newsletter list. So when you are actually at the event and you have them filling out their contact information on their form, be sure that that form actually has a little line that indicates that by putting their information on this form, they are agreeing to receive your email newsletter, because that way you are securing permission from them.

But it’s really important that in addition to doing sort of one-on-one follow up with leads, you are also adding them to whatever long term nurture sequence you have in place for those leads.

So in our case we do a weekly email newsletter. I would encourage you to do the same if you are not already doing that. And so even if we totally drop the ball and do nothing else, I know that at the very least they are subscribed to our weekly email newsletter.

So you want to make sure that at the time you are entering these leads into your database, they are also automatically subscribed to your long term nurture sequence or your weekly email newsletter. Those are kind of the same thing in the business that you are in.

Number three, call to fulfill the sample or trial. If you set things up in the way that I described where you are capturing the people’s contact information in exchange for the trial or sample, then now you actually have a reason to follow up other than just hey, buy something from me. Right?

Because you have made them a promise, hey I’m going to give you a free sample or trial in exchange for your contact information and now the reason you are calling them is to actually fulfill that trial or sample.

So in the case of our business, whenever we do a street fair, we give away two free weeks of karate or kickboxing classes. So when we, after we enter the information into our system and they got their little note, hey it’s great meeting you. Here is some information about our programs. They also get automatically entered into our newsletter.

Over the course of the next couple of days we could actually take our time and calling each person and making an appointment for them to take their first free class.

So, you’ll find that when you collect leads at an event like this, not everyone is going to actually take you up on your offer. And it may seem a little weird to you because you are like, wait, I’m giving away free stuff. This is awesome.

But sometimes people just aren’t ready to take advantage of it. So don’t be surprised if you only get like say one out of ten people taking advantage of it right away. It’s totally normal.

And the beautiful thing is because you already entered that person into your long term nurture system, they are going to be hearing from you.

You are going to be given the opportunity now to develop that relationship. And I can tell you that in our business it’s very often happens that people have been on our list one year, two years or maybe even three years after we meet them at an event and it’s actually at that point that they come in and sign up for a program.

So don’t be alarmed if you aren’t converting all of these leads into customers right away, even into trials right away because sometimes people just aren’t ready to take advantage of it yet. It doesn’t mean you are doing something wrong.

So how many times should you follow up? I would say that you should follow up at least three times to offer them the free sample or trial that you talked about at the event.

So you want to reach out at least three times to fulfill that sample. If they are not responsive after three times, give them a little rest. It’s totally fine because know that your long term nurture sequence or your weekly email newsletter is going to take care of building that relationship with the clients so that when they are ready to purchase, they are going to think of you first.

All right. If you found this video useful, be sure to sign up to get email updates from me. You just have to go to carmensognonvi.com/newsletter and sign up there. And if you have a question you would like answered in a future video, just send your question to infor@carmensognonvi.com.

Okay, it’s time for some shout outs. We are doing some Instagram additions. I want to shout out to Loretta Williams Gornell, Carlos A. Ponte Jr. and Hustle Management. I have added their profiles below, so be sure to check them out. They are all people doing cool things and to the rest of you, thank you for watching.